Sachiko, from the series My grandmothers

The work of Miwa Yanagi has always comprised highly orchestrated and constructed images, such as her ‘Elevator girls’ series 1999–2002. Here eerie scenes of young Japanese women, composed, directed and dressed by the artist, present the uniformed and clone-like existence of such female roles in Japan. In ‘My grandmothers’ the artist has again arranged each scene and digitally manipulated the resulting image to realise the embodiment of an imaginary future self – as a maternal ancestor 50 years from now.

Unlike the depersonalised elevator girls, Yanagi’s grandmothers are distinct individuals with a powerful presence. They are distinguished by their independence, evident in the unique ideas, hopes and dreams for their future selves in old age. This is communicated through accompanying text panels that read as direct voices, emphasising their individuality. Based on interviews conducted with the women selected to embody themselves in the future as model grandmothers, the text is her imagined life 50 years from now. Yanagi thus provides an insight into the otherwise unspoken desires and hopes of her models, intimating and facilitating an otherwise dormant individualism and suggesting future hopes for ageing and wisdom in youth.

A sense of independence is a necessary virtue for women by Yanagi’s standards; required in order to become an extraordinary and wise grandmother, and needed by any young Japanese woman hoping to escape the debilitating conformity of female roles offered by contemporary Japanese society.1

1. See Mako Wakasa’s 2002 interview with Miwa Yanagi in which she discusses her thoughts on the conservatism in contemporary Japanese society: ‘Miwa Yanagi’, ‘Journal of Contemporary Art’, www.jca-online.com/yanagi.html. Accessed 27.09.2006

© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007